Must (Re)Watch Moment of the Week!

Every week, ETonline selects a scene that is so magical, it demands watching, and re-watching, from fans and non-fans alike. This week, that honor goes to New Girl!

SPOILER ALERT!!!

While it wasn't "years in the making" like some other long-awaited small screen smooches (lookin' at you, Castle), New Girl's big kiss still made quite an impact last night and now the show's creator is revealing why it almost didn't happen!

As it aired, Nick and Jess spent hours locked in a "Seven Minutes in Heaven"-type situation as a penalty during the return of True American, but he couldn't bring himself to kiss her. "Not like this," Nick said in a rare moment of soul-baring honesty that made Jess' internally swoon and the audience collectively sigh. Eventually Nick and Jess escaped the room without locking lips. However, in the episode's closing moments, the two found themselves alone and Nick, in grand fashion, laid a long, passionate kiss on Jess.

Originally, as Liz Meriwether tells it, Jess was supposed to spend the episode locked up with Schmidt! That plan was quickly abandoned, but the writers debated for a long time if the two should smooch. A week before shooting, the writers decided to go for it. "We were right on the edge of starting to spin our wheels with their story and holding out any longer felt like not an honest thing," Meriwether tells EW.com.

"It felt exciting to give ourselves this challenge of how are they going to get out of this or how is this going to affect everything. We came up with the way for him to kiss her the way he wanted to. And as we were pitching it out we were all like, 'That's hot!'" And the actors agreed. "In the past we'd have to do another take because Nick and Jess were sitting too close together and they wanted to keep us apart," Jake Johnson tells EW.com. "So we were really excited we were allowed to go for it."

But those early nerves persisted well into shooting, and only evaporated moments after Johnson and Zooey Deschanel filmed their big scene. "We did a full take without cutting away," Meriwether recalls. "And after he kissed her the whole crew started applauding. We all looked at each other. Everything changed. It just felt like we ignited something in the show."

However, you shouldn't take the kiss to mean Nick and Jess are going to jump into a full-blown relationship any time soon. "Obviously there are a lot of obstacles to them being together," Meriwether concedes. "We're just trying to be honest about how we think this relationship would actually go down." Johnson concurs. "I want that relationship to get as complicated as possible before it either ends or becomes real.”